


the stone inside you still hasn’t hit bottom

by Duckyboos



Series: i only come when you scream [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Arson, Canon Bastardization, Character Death, Death, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, F/M, M/M, Murder, Serial Killer Castiel, Serial Killer Dean Winchester, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 21:32:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15033743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duckyboos/pseuds/Duckyboos
Summary: Dean just can’t remember to forget Cas.





	the stone inside you still hasn’t hit bottom

**Author's Note:**

> So, this takes place a couple of months after _i say i want you inside me and you split me open with a knife_. 
> 
> As usual, sorry for taking so long to get on with it. Most of the next part is written, so hopefully it shouldn't be too long. 
> 
> Thank you for all of your comments... I read and savour every single one <3.

Dean can't think about it. About any of it. Can't think about Cas, can't think about him in jail, can’t think about why the stupid self-sacrificing bastard did it, can’t think about how much he misses the gorgeous fucker so much that it feels like a physical ache between his ribs, can't think about that time he was fucked so good from behind, Cas’ breath hot and heavy against Dean's sweat-damp skin, fucking him until his muscles cramped and he came with tears down his face and Cas’ name on his lips.

No, he can't think about any of that.

So, he drinks.

Drinks to forget that he's alone and without Cas for the first time in four years.

  
  


***

 

Standing outside a nondescript gray building in the middle of California, Dean’s beginning to realize that:

  1. he’s pretty drunk, and;
  2. this is an insanely bad idea.



The two aren’t mutually exclusive of late.

Admittedly though, this is another level of dumbassery. Perhaps even topping the fuck-stupid idea that landed Cas in jail for eight years and change in the first place.

It’s a pretty campus, Dean’ll give his brother that. Meticulously attended lawns, attractive shrubbery, well-kept algae-free swimming pool, cute co-eds.

Which is yet another reason of many why Dean sticks out like a serial killer on a university campus. Like, how the fuck did Edmund bigfoot fucking Kemper manage to blend in somehow? Even in the darkness that comes with it being almost midnight, Dean’s having trouble, and he’s certainly no six-foot-nine ugly brick wall.

Trying (and failing) to look as harmless and non-threatening as possible, despite having more weapons in the trunk of his car than in the entirety of Harpers Ferry Armory, Dean meanders his way across the lawn of Sam’s campus dorm, weaving between girls in pleated skirts and cute sweaters and guys wearing khakis and thick-rimmed glasses. 

Sam’s room is apparently on the third floor, which means a long and quite frankly terrifying climb up the fire escape (‘cause like fuck is he going to give Sam the opportunity to slam the door in his his face).

For someone brought up the way that both Dean and Sam were, his younger brother is remarkably careless, as Dean is able to slip inside the dorm room through an open sash window, undetected.

Well. He thinks it’s undetected. That is until he’s a few steps into the tidy apartment and encounters a bohemian -  _ what the everloving fuck, Sam _ \- bead curtain, and ends up losing a fight to the damn thing, nearly strangling himself on one of the suspended strings. Unfortunately, his drunken flailing makes enough of a noise that even Sam, the same Sam who used to sleep like the dead, will almost certainly be awake.

Fuck’s sake.

Dean is clued in to just how awake his baby brother is a moment later when there’s a hand the size of a fucking continent grabbing Dean’s shoulder, and Dean’s reacting on muscle memory alone, knocking the arm away and aiming a strike, before he can think better of it. The figure (Sam, it’s gotta be Sam), ducks, making Dean miss (he  _ is _ pretty wasted, he’s not usually this lame). Dean tries again, grabbing for the dude’s arm, swinging him around and shoving him back.

Dean's brother, the little shit, kicks out at him, and Dean barely manages to block, pushing Sam away into another room, through some more facetiously noisy beads.

Dean sees the moment that realization and recognition dawns on his brother’s face, but Dean’s pent up and pissed off, so he keeps the momentum going, elbowing Sam in the face before Sam kicks at his head. Dean ducks and swings again, but it’s easily telegraphed now that Sam knows who he’s up against. Years of teenage scrapping and fighting one another mean that it comes to them both naturally.

However, Dean’s learned a trick or two since then, and so when Dean kicks Sam’s legs out from underneath him, knocking him down, Sam’s completely surprised, allowing Dean to pin him to the floor, one hand at Sam’s neck and the other holding Sam’s wrist.

Dean grins sloppily down into the face of his brother, “Whoa, easy, tiger.”

They’re both breathing hard, chests rising and falling in unison. “Dean?”

In response, Dean laughs. The absurdity of the situation combined with the alcohol replacing 98% of the blood in his veins make him helpless to do anything else.

“What the fuck man?” Sam demands, attempting to shove Dean away with his free hand. “You scared the shit outta me!”

“Psht.” Dean murmurs, leaning back a little, releasing the pressure on his brother’s wrist. “It’s only ‘cause you’re outta practice. What the hell were you thinking, leaving the window op--”

If Dean were sober, there’s no way that he would have let Sam grab his hand and yank, slamming his oversized heel into Dean’s back, rolling them over until Dean’s underneath him.

Credit where credit’s due, however. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Sammy.”

Sam shoots Dean the mother of all bitchfaces. Number six. One of the originals and best.

Dean flexes the hand held by the wrist in Sam’s grip. “Get off of me, you fucking sasquatch.”

Sam rolls to his feet and pulls Dean up along with him. It’s a little intimidating just how much Sam’s grown up since his late teens; he’s definitely all man now, there’s nothing but strength in his body and the puppy fat cuteness of his face has finally melted away to reveal cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass.

He’s still got those ridiculous bangs though.

“What the hell are you doing here?” He’s eyeing Dean as if they’re strangers. Which in a way, they sort of are. It’s not like Dean knows anything about Sam’s adult life, and Sam certainly knows nothing about Dean.

Which Dean is about to change. In his mind’s eye, he can clearly see Cas’ disapproving face, but he can go fuck himself because he left Dean all alone, despite his promise not to and now Dean has nothing else left.

Fuck.

“Well, I  _ was _ looking for a beer.”

Oooh. Dean’s not seen this bitchface before. It’s a good one. “I think you've had enough, Dean.”

While that may or may not be true (it definitely is; Dean’s either swaying where he stands or this dorm room is some kind of wacky shack in disguise), it’s not Sam’s place to say. Dean’s the elder brother goddammit and--

The apartment is abruptly filled with light, making everything far too bright for Dean’s liking. It takes his eyes a few minutes to adjust, and when Dean is able to see his brother again, it seems as though he’s having the same issue.

“Sam?”

Yeah, that’s definitely not Dean’s voice. Not unless something very drastic has happened within the last two minutes.

Sam’s looking towards another (beadless) doorway, so Dean follows his gaze.

Oh.  _ Oh. _

There’s a pretty blond girl standing there in nothing more than very short shorts and a cropped Smurfs shirt.

She’s obviously comfortable in the apartment and around Sam and it hurts. It hurts initially because Dean’s been missing from Sam’s life and has therefore missed something as monumental as this, but it hurts more because of the obvious intimacy that they have. Dean knows what that’s like and misses the fuck out of it.

Goddammit, Cas.

But since Dean is mostly a personality that’s grown like scar tissue over the wound of himself, instead of articulating anything meaningful, he grins suggestively and says, “I love the Smurfs. You know, I gotta tell you. You are completely out of my brother's league.”

Beside him, he can almost  _ hear _ Sam’s eyes rolling.

The girlfriend glances between Dean and Sam, bemused. “Uh...Just let me put something on.” She turns to go.

Because Dean’s in this for the long haul, he stops her. “No, no, no, I wouldn't dream of it. Seriously.”

“Dean, behave yourself or leave.” Sam’s voice is granite, no softness or affection there, and so to ease the sudden tension, Dean backs off with a shrug.

“You’re no fun, Sam. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Yeah, you.” Sam’s expression is stony, eyes dull, and Dean needs to salvage this before he loses the only other person in the world that he gives a shit about.

He turns his attention to the girl again. “Anyway, I gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family stuff. But, uh, nice meeting you.”

So of course, Sam, the prize dick that he is, goes over to his girlfriend and puts his arm around her slender shoulders. “Dean, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of her.”

Really? Because Dean’s pretty sure that the shit he came here to say is not something that needs to be witnessed by a third party, but judging by the serious look on Sam’s face, he’s not gonna have it any other way.

Okie dokie then.

“Okay. Sam, lady I barely know.” He pauses for dramatic effect, because there’s absolutely no way that this announcement doesn’t warrant it. “I killed someone. Well actually, several someones, but that’s neither here nor there really, because I think there’s kind of a threshold that once you’re above it, you’re irredeemable, and I’m pretty sure that I passed that a few years back before I met Ca--never mind, that doesn’t matter…”

He trails off and risks a glance at his brother and the Smurfette. Sam’s eyes are sharp and alive, more so than Dean’s witnessed since he first set foot in the apartment. The girl on the other hand, well, she looks about as horrified as Dean was expecting.

Dean’s not sure whether Sam’s going to punch him or hug him. It’s about fifty-fifty at the moment and Dean’s not even sure which he’d prefer. It’d be good if Sam could find it in him to say something soon though, or Dean’s just going to chalk this up to another failed attempt at self-destruction and keep drinking himself to death instead.

“So,” Sam says finally,  _ fucking finally. _ “let me get this straight,” he’s deliberately over-enunciating every syllable, making it as clear as possible to someone as dumb as Dean, “you broke in here past midnight during finals week, drunk off your ass, after damn near four years of no contact, to tell me you're a serial killer?”

Dean pauses, processing the information. Yep. Seems to be the gist of it. “I think that about covers it, yeah.”

Sam looks murderous, which given the context, makes Dean want to laugh. “Will you excuse us a moment, please Jess?”

Jess. It suits her. She looks a little dubious, but with a barely there, “uh, sure,” disappears back into the relative darkness of the other room.

As soon as she’s gone, Sam’s rounding on him, hissing in a stage whisper, as if the cat isn’t already out of the bag and curled up with Jess in the other room as she calls the cops, “Dean, what the actual fuck are you doing?”

Penance or some shit. This’ll teach Cas to go to prison without him. Sam’s too goddamn righteous to let this slide. Blood or not.

“Why the hell would you say that in front of Jess?”

Dean opens his mouth to answer that Sam had told him to and  _ what the fuck is his problem _ , but Sam is already moving past him, muttering to himself, pacing. The world must stutter and slip into an alternate timeline or something (or maybe Dean’s blood-alcohol content has something to do with it), because Sam's mumbling shit about having to drop out of college, and figuring shit out, and Dean needs to sit down before he falls the fuck down.

Conveniently, there’s some kind of ikea-based nightmare masquerading as a coffee table to his right, so Dean plonks himself down and waits for Sam to quit acting crazy long enough for him to get a word in.

Eventually, Sam stops dead and turns to look at Dean fully. “Dean.” He says with all the gravitas of a lawyer at a murder trial. Ironic, really. Alanis should get in on this shit. “I've known what you are for some time now. Like since I was sixteen or something.”

Wait. What.

“Yeah,” he says upon seeing Dean's expression, which must be somewhere between confused and  _ really fucking confused _ . “You don't think my weird interest in serial killers was coincidental, do you?”

Well, as a matter of fact…

Sammy's always been smart. Dean had kinda just assumed that this was another area of interest for him. Like that summer when he became obsessed with rocks and made Dean track down back issues of some rock collectors magazine. (As part-payment for doing just that, Dean had taken the free ‘embellishments’ that came with the magazine; namely some wool, googly eyes and feathers [in order to create a rock pet, the magazine suggested naively, as if there weren’t people like Dean sticking the googly eyes to their cock to amuse chicks - or themselves]).

The point is, that Dean has just assumed that Sam’s interests were just that: interests.

Like, people are interested in serial killers, right? It's a thing. It doesn’t mean that they’re going around slicing and dicing people.

“Dean. Let me spell it out for you. I'm just. like. you.”

Except for when it does, apparently.

Well, holy shit.

Dean’s far too drunk to be having this conversation. He scrubs a hand through the scruff on his chin, tries not to think of his stubble causing beard burn on Cas’ perfectly muscular thighs. Fails. “Is there a place we can grab something to eat? I need to be at least 50% more sober for this.”

Sam looks more relieved than anything, and almost smiles for the first time tonight, dimples threatening to pop. “Sure. There’s a Jack in the Box, just off the El Camino Real.”

Dean rises unsteadily to his feet. He suddenly feels wiped out, simply tired of everything. He wanted better for Sam. Wanted him to be the righteous man that Dean never was. Though, he’d be lying if he said that there wasn’t somewhere in the deepest, darkest recesses of his soul that’s pretty fucking happy that he doesn’t have to be alone anymore. He’s not sure when he became this codependent, but it’s definitely Cas’ fault. Fucking bastard. “Okay. Let’s go. It okay if I use the front door this time?”

Sam does smile then. “Sure. Hey, gimme a minute. I’ll be right down, okay?”

“I’ll be waiting in the car.”

 

***

Around a mouthful of cheeseburger, Dean asks, “So you actually done shit yet? You been Kempering up in this bitch?”

Sam shakes his head, spears a piece of lettuce on his fork and Jesus fucking wept, this is not the kid that Dean raised, “I’ve tried to be normal, y’know? Suppress it, I guess. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

The admission is a Patrick-Swayze-in-Roadhouse-throat-rip. Which is not nearly as awesome as it sounds. In fact, it hurts enough that he actually stops eating, replacing the burger on the plate, “Sammy, you’ve never disappointed me.” He waits a beat for relief to trinkle in to Sam’s expression, and then adds, “Except for when you ordered a fucking salad in a burger joint, but that’s the least of our problems right now.”

Sam barks out a laugh, “Fuck you, Dean. Just ‘cause I don’t wanna have a heart attack before I’m thirty.”

Dean grins, resumes eating. His voice is muffled by bread and meat and it disgusts his brother in exactly the same way as it always has. Good to know that some things never change. “Sweet, so I’ve got another four years, yeah?”

“Don’t say shit like that man,” Sam says, entire demeanour changing, and then he’s glowering across the plastic-covered table at Dean. “I’ve already missed out on the last four, I don’t want the next four - and yes that means I’m coming the hell with you in case you were wondering - to be spent wondering exactly when you’re gonna drop dead.”

Dean has no response that’ll do either Sam’s fierce concern or his own joy at his brother's steadfast determination to join him on the road justice, so he instead opts for working on his burger. The eat in silence until they’re finished, Dean throwing his napkin onto the plate and belching loudly.

“So what  _ have _ you been doing for the last nearly half a decade?” Sam asks tentatively, looking at least six years younger as he sips at his coke through a bright pink straw.

Dean resists the urge to make a comment on the straw instead of addressing the issue.

“Err, not much.” He says ignoring that the actual answer is too painful to even glance at now that he’s sobering up, let alone talk about. “I’m the Highway Butcher, so there’s that I guess.”

He’s only a tiny bit proud.

In a move reserved exclusively for romcoms Sam’s mouth actually drops open and he splutters against the drink in his mouth. “W-what? That’s you?”

Dean actually feels heat rushing to his cheeks. “Yeah, man.”

Sam leans in close, all hush-hush, and Dean mirrors the position, reminiscent of two teenage girls sharing a secret at a sleepover. “They reckon you’ve killed about fifteen, what’s the real number?”

Dean has to think for a second, because including those killed at Roman’s casino is always difficult. “At least double that,” he hedges.

“Holy fuck,” Sam says, leaning back in the booth, eyes wide. “Holy fucking shit, Dean.”

Dean can’t look at Sam, can’t face the obvious admiration that his brother has for him. Instead, he focuses on tearing up a clean napkin. “Any others you like? Any you’re interested in mimicking?”

If they’re doing this, they’re doing it right. There’s to be no half measures or laziness that’ll get one or both of them caught. Dean’s gonna be taking Sammy on and then turning him out as a perfect killing machine.

Without hesitation, Sam answers, “The Suffolk County Reaper,” because of course he fucking does. Because Dean’s life is shit and he can’t catch a goddamn cold let alone a break.

In fairness though, Sam's always had a boner for the Reaper. Must run in the family.

“Yeah?” Dean barely manages without giving himself away. “What about him?”

“Man,” Sam says shaking his head, smiling, “He’s just… his work is exquisite. There’s no hesitation or indecision in anything he does, y’know? Like, I’d love to be that sure about something, anything.”

Yeah, Dean’s not touching that with a bargepole. A change of subject is required. He clears his throat, “So, what are we gonna do about your girlfriend? You think she’s gonna talk to anyone about what I said?”

“Nah,” Sam says, coldly nonchalant. “She’s not gonna say anything to anybody.”

“You sound sure.” Dean comments, taking his wallet out and dropping a twenty and ten on the table between the two empty plates.

“Yeah.” Sam says, standing and stretching. Dean follows suit and together they walk out of the diner. It’s not until they’re almost back at the car that Sam adds, “I’ve made sure.”

 

***

Back at the campus, all hell has broken loose. Fire trucks and cops cars are parked haphazardly on Sam’s street and the campus itself is awash with college students. Dean slows the car right down as they approach Sam’s building, allowing Sam get out to speak to a large group of gathered kids in various states of dress, huddled together behind a police cordon, watching the firefighters trying to smother the blazing building with multiple streams of water. It’s almost three am, but the fire is burning so brightly that everything within a two mile radius is lit up in the orangey-red glow.

Yeah, this is going to be nothing good.

Dean’s out of the car once it’s parked and stalking over to his brother. “Sam, what the fuck--”

Sam turns to Dean, tears streaking down his face, shimmering against his skin, tainted a fiery red. “Our apartment--” He starts, chokes off. Tries again. “--Jess, she--”

Dean’s insides turn to ice despite the strength and heat of the blaze crackling mere feet away. “She was inside?”

“Yeah,” Sam says and it’s then that Dean looks at his brother, really  _ looks _ . The tears are real enough, but there’s nothing behind them. Nothing there at all. No emotion, no nothing. It’d be creepy if Dean didn’t know what it meant.

“Jesus.” Dean mutters, a little proud and little scared.

“Yeah,” Sam repeats, fire illuminating his expression, reflected in his eyes.

Dean shivers and it has nothing to do with the temperature of the smouldering air.

How in the hell has Sam managed to hide this from him - from  _ anyone _ \- for so long? What kind of brother is Dean to have not noticed this kind of darkness in someone he’d always assumed had nothing but lightness in his soul?

“Sammy, I’m so sorry,” Dean says eventually just for something to say. But it’s meant on multiple levels. All this time wasted.

Well. It’s not like Cas was a waste of time, but the whole thing with the no-good asshole has gotten him nowhere except perhaps a few years closer to liver failure.

“Yeah.” Sam responds listlessly, every inch the numb, heartbroken boyfriend, but Dean doesn’t need the “I’m not” added to understand that it’s implied.

Well, fuck. Dean would say that it looks like they’ve got work to do, but the shit that they’re gonna be getting up to will be 100% for pleasure.

Fuck Cas and his perfect ass (poor choice of words, but the sentiment is there). It’s the Winchester brothers against the world now.

Dean can’t wait.


End file.
